Porn?

You know, I admit I’m a sucker for a censored work, or even an attempted-censored work. Film, movie, music whatever. It just makes me want to know so much more about what the message was when there’s someone trying to keep me from accessing it.

More so when the intimidating group comes from religious circles. It’s not likely I would have waded through Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses if there hadn’t been a fatwa issued. Tough for Salman, but I can just imagine the the publishing house’s marketing team clicking their heels over the noting that a religious nutter had done their work for them.

No, I suppose it’s not a cool admission. sort of like admitting you weren’t into some punk band back when they were with Sub-Pop Records.

Similarly, with other media, The Last Temptation of Christ, wouldn’t have watched that unless there was a bible-thumping drumbeat trying to ward people off of it. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s an Ayatollah or a vice presidential candidate with penchant for trying to get books tossed out of the local library, these people have no background as literary critics.

So it’s interesting to me that an author of a book that is the subject of attempted censorship by religious zealots is herself turning on critics of her work, accusing them of stocking violence, just by criticizing her work.

Sherry Jones apparently wrote her novel, The Jewel of the Medina, from the vantage point of one of the prophet Mohammed’s wives, A’isha, without any notion that there could be a controversy around it. No, her self-described “feminist historical novel” which she said came to her because of the events of Sept. 11, was supposed to be a “bridge-builder between the West and Islam.” A doubtful prospect and a dubious assertion. It’s the sort of apologetic claim that is sually made only after the criticism mounts.

Not even on the bookshelves yet, the backlash has begun. Random House dropped the book in an utterly stunning case of cowardice. The controversy loving publishing house Beaufort Books (bhind OJ Simpson’s If I Did It) has picked it up and the home of Martin Fynja, of Gibson Square (the UK publisher of the book) was firebombed. And what has the author spent her time doing? Going after academics and book critics.

Denise Spellberg, an associate professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas, reviewed the book, including her thoughts that, “I don’t have a problem with historical fiction. I do have a problem with the deliberate misinterpretation of history. You can’t play with a sacred history and turn it into soft core pornography.” The author now wants the professor to retract her comments and apologize, saying she’s inciting violence by “using the most inflammatory language she could possibly have used.”

And enough with the recap. I’d be more likely to support Sherry Jones’ efforts as a novelist expressing herself if she wasn’t so eager to shut everyone else down. She wrote a book. By their very nature, books are repositories of ideas. And here’s where a lot of writers of books meant to be more than just books want it both ways. By her own admission, Sherry Jones wants her work to impact and alter how people interact with one another. The problem with that is, you don’t get to have a choice in how people receive your work or respond to it. You don’t get to control the interaction.

By saying your work is for people to come together, but that a negative write-up of it will spur violence is more than slightly hypocritical. I was more likely to support publication of the work when it was merely being derided as soft core porn, something I can get behind. But if it’s somethign that must be consumed only in a narrow, limited context of “bringing us all together,” then we can quickly assume it is a failure before it’s even hit the stands. It’s stopped being literature and has become propaganda.

The thing is, a lot of writers want it both ways. They want to get out controversial writing that sparks debate, protest, a change of mindset. But they don’t want to take the blame when it goes off message. Upton Sinclair was expressing his outrage over the treatment of laborers when he penned The Jungle. The result didn’t do as much for the blue collar worker as start a consumer rights movement, though, as people reacted to the grotesque, vivid descriptions of the meat processing plant processes. In the end, The Jungle is far more referenced by vegetarians, animal rights groups and consumer advocates than organized labor. Once the book is written, the author has to concede that it has a life of its own, and that the reactions are basically beyond control.

And that’s fine.

While ideas spur action, the people who make those actions are still responsible for what they do. If a review of Sherry Jones book can be held accountable for causing violence, then we may want to consider Sherry Jones guilty of that firebombing of the publisher’s house. That would be ridiculous, of course. The people who created the bomb, crept to the house and ignited it are guilty. More so than even the people who told them that was the thing to do in this sort of situation. Citing them as a reason for critics not to talk about your work is ridiculous.

Whatever happens as a result of publishing Sherry Jones’ book shouldn’t be taken into account when deciding whether to publish it. If that were to become a precedent, then the book publishing industry may as well call itself dead. How many so-called “dangerous books” wouldn’t have been published under such a scale?

If literature is to be the engine for discourse, though, authors can’t be using the same weaponry that the censors seek to use against them.

More than retract her stupid remarks against Denise Spellberg, Sherry Jones should apologize as well. Not because Spellberg is right or wrong, but because Sherry Jones is lowering the level of discourse to a Sarah Palin standard when she claims that honest, forthright criticism could be responsible for actual violence. But then again, maybe that’s part of her new publishing house’s marketing strategy.

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